The
Altrurian was greatly interested, not so much in the landscape--though he
owned its beauty when we cried out over it from point to point--but in the
human incidents and features. He noticed the cattle in the fields, and the
horses we met on the road, and the taste and comfort of the buildings, the
variety of the crops, and the promise of the harvest. I was glad of the
respite his questions gave me from the study of the intimate character of
our civilization, for they were directed now at these more material facts,
and I willingly joined Mrs. Makely in answering them. We explained that
the finest teams we met were from the different hotels or boarding-houses,
or at least from the farms where the people took city people to board; and
that certain shabby equipages belonged to the natives who lived solely by
cultivating the soil. There was not very much of the soil cultivated, for
the chief crop was hay, with here and there a patch of potatoes or beans,
and a few acres in sweet-corn. The houses of the natives, when they were
for their use only, were no better than their turnouts; it was where the
city boarder had found shelter that they were modern and pleasant.
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